Fastest-Growing Jobs in Australia to 2035

Quick answer

Jobs and Skills Australia projects total employment will hit 16.6 million people by May 2035, up from 14.7 million in May 2025 (Jobs and Skills Australia, 2025 Employment Projections, December 2025). That's 961,000 more jobs over the next five years and nearly 2 million more over ten. The occupations projected to grow fastest are concentrated in health and care: Physiotherapists (up 33.6%), Health and Welfare Services Managers (up 27.1%), Dental Assistants (up 26.8%), ICT Managers (up 25.5%), and Nursing Support and Personal Care Workers (up 24.7%). Health Care and Social Assistance is the single biggest driver of that growth. One honest catch: these projections do not model the effect of generative AI, because JSA built them from existing trends before that shift showed up in the data.

If you're in a call centre, claims or admin role right now, growth alone won't move you into one of these jobs. You still need a realistic path in. Start with a free Career Change Check to see where you stand and which of these destinations are actually reachable from where you are.

How JSA makes these projections, and what they leave out

Jobs and Skills Australia doesn't run these numbers itself. It commissions Victoria University's Employment Forecasting model (VUEF), which takes the Australian Treasury's population, migration and economic outlook and runs it through industry and occupation trends going back years. The result is the 2025 Employment Projections, covering both a 5-year outlook to May 2030 and a 10-year outlook to May 2035, broken down by industry, occupation and state.

Here's the part JSA says plainly, and we're not going to soften it: these projections are built on existing trends. They do "not currently reflect the labour market implications of the adoption of generative AI and other emerging technologies" (Jobs and Skills Australia, 2025 Employment Projections, December 2025). In other words, if a wave of AI-driven task automation hits claims processing or customer service over the next two years, this model won't have seen it coming. JSA has a separate study for that, Our Gen AI Transition, which we cover in the section below and in our guide to jobs most exposed to AI.

So treat this growth data for what it is: a solid, government-modelled picture of where demand is heading based on demographics and existing industry patterns, not a forecast that has priced in AI. Use it alongside the AI exposure data, not instead of it.

Caption: Total employment in Australia is projected to grow from 14.7 million in May 2025 to 16.6 million by May 2035. Alt text: Line chart showing Australian total employment rising from 14.7 million people in May 2025 to 16.6 million people in May 2035, based on Jobs and Skills Australia projections.

The fastest-growing industries

Health Care and Social Assistance is already the largest industry in the country, employing close to one in six working Australians. JSA's projections show it also has the strongest projected growth of any industry over both the 5- and 10-year horizons, at 23% over the decade to May 2035 (Jobs and Skills Australia, Employment Projections - Industry outlook, accessed July 2026). That's mostly the ageing population showing up in the data: more people aged 65 and over means more demand for health services and, in particular, residential aged care.

Professional, Scientific and Technical Services is the next standout, projected to grow around 19% over the decade. This is the catch-all industry for engineering, IT consulting, legal, accounting and other knowledge-based services, and it's growing well above the national average of 13%.

Zoom out and the pattern is consistent: JSA's data shows services-related industries account for 84% of all projected employment growth over both the 5- and 10-year outlook, while goods-producing industries (agriculture, mining, manufacturing, construction) grow more slowly. Retail Trade, for context, is one of the weakest performers, a symptom of spending shifting from goods to services and cost-of-living pressure on discretionary retail.

On the renewables side, JSA's separate 2023 capacity study, The Clean Energy Generation, found that building Australia's renewable energy infrastructure was expected to require around 450,000 workers by 2030, close to a third of all projected jobs growth in the economy at that point (Jobs and Skills Australia, The Clean Energy Generation, 3 October 2023). That study predates the 2025 Employment Projections and uses a different method, so treat it as directional evidence that energy and utilities work is a genuine growth pocket, not a like-for-like number with the rest of this post. It is also JSA's most recent published estimate for the clean energy workforce specifically: as of July 2026, JSA has not released an updated clean energy workforce figure, so the 2023 number remains the latest available.

The fastest-growing occupations, and which ones you can actually reach

JSA's occupation-level data names three occupation groups doing most of the heavy lifting. Professionals are projected to grow by 845,300 people (21.4%) over the decade, more than any other group, mostly in health therapy roles. Managers are projected to grow by 279,600 people (14.9%), led by health, ICT and R&D management. Community and Personal Service Workers are projected to grow by 236,100 people (13.7%), led by dental assisting, personal care and paramedic work (Jobs and Skills Australia, Employment Projections - Outlook by occupation, accessed July 2026).

Some of the named top growers, like Physiotherapists and Research and Development Managers, need years of university study and aren't realistic moves from a call centre or claims desk in the next 12 to 24 months. But several of the fastest-growing occupations sit inside occupation families that are genuinely reachable from admin, claims or customer service backgrounds:

Nursing Support and Personal Care Workers (up 24.7% to 2035). Entry is usually a Certificate III in Individual Support, doable part-time while still working. This feeds directly into aged care and disability support, including NDIS coordination roles.
Dental Assistants (up 26.8% to 2035). Certificate III entry, often with paid on-the-job training built in. Customer-facing experience from a call centre or reception role transfers well.
Health and Welfare Services Managers (up 27.1% to 2035). Not an entry point, but a realistic destination after two to three years in health administration roles or care coordination, where admin and people-management experience compounds.
Medical and health administration roles more broadly. These don't top the named growth list individually, but they sit inside Health Care and Social Assistance, the fastest-growing industry overall, and draw heavily on the scheduling, records and customer-service skills a claims or admin background already has.

If you want the wider list of roles actively short-staffed right now rather than just growing on paper, our guide to jobs in shortage in Australia covers the occupations where employers are struggling to fill vacancies today.

Caption: Projected employment growth by occupation, May 2025 to May 2035, for roles reachable from admin, claims and customer service backgrounds. Alt text: Horizontal bar chart ranking Australian occupations reachable from call centre and admin roles by projected percentage growth to 2035, led by Dental Assistants and Nursing Support and Personal Care Workers.

Growth is not automatic: what each destination actually needs

A growing occupation is not an open door. It's a queue with a specific entry requirement, and that requirement is usually one of three things: a qualification, a licence, or time served in an adjacent role.

Nursing support and personal care work needs a Certificate III, typically 6 to 12 months part-time through TAFE or a registered training organisation, plus a police check and, for aged care specifically, a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) worker screening check or aged care equivalent. Dental assisting is similar: Certificate III, sometimes bundled with a traineeship where you're paid while you train. Health administration roles vary more, some ask for nothing beyond solid computer literacy and customer service experience, others want a Certificate IV in Health Administration or Business Administration.

The management-track roles, like Health and Welfare Services Managers, aren't something you apply for straight out of a call centre. JSA's own data shows these roles sit at skill level 1, meaning a bachelor's degree is the typical benchmark, though in practice many people reach them through years of frontline and coordination experience rather than a fresh degree. That's a multi-year move, not a next-job move.

The honest read: growth tells you where the jobs will be. It doesn't tell you how long it takes to get one, or whether you personally have what a specific employer wants right now. That's a separate question, and it's a question worth answering for your own background before you commit years to a Certificate III or a career change.

Cross-referencing growth with AI exposure

Growth and AI exposure are two different axes, and a role can score well on one and badly on the other. A role can be projected to grow because of population ageing, and still have parts of its day-to-day work reshaped by generative AI tools over the same period.

JSA's separate Gen AI Transition study, released in three stages between August and September 2025, looked at exposure occupation by occupation and found that generative AI is, on the whole, more likely to change and augment jobs than replace them outright, with the biggest effects concentrated in roles built around routine, repeatable tasks (Jobs and Skills Australia, Our Gen AI Transition, 14 August 2025). Care and health roles, the ones driving most of the growth in this post, tend to score lower on AI exposure than clerical and administrative roles, because so much of the work involves physical presence, judgement calls and direct human contact that current AI tools can't do.

That's not a coincidence. It's a large part of why health and care occupations show up on both lists: they're growing because of demographics, and they're comparatively insulated from the kind of task automation reshaping customer service and back-office admin work right now. For the fuller picture of where your current role sits on the exposure scale, read our AI exposure by occupation guide.

FAQ

What is the fastest-growing job in Australia to 2035? Physiotherapists, projected to grow 33.6% over the decade to May 2035 (Jobs and Skills Australia, Employment Projections, December 2025). Among roles reachable without a university degree, Dental Assistants (26.8%) and Nursing Support and Personal Care Workers (24.7%) lead. Both sit in Health Care and Social Assistance, the industry with the strongest overall growth.

How many jobs will Australia add by 2035? Jobs and Skills Australia projects total employment will grow by 961,000 people (6.5%) over the five years to May 2030, and by nearly 2 million people (13.3%) over the ten years to May 2035, reaching 16.6 million people employed, up from 14.7 million in May 2025. Most of that growth sits in services industries, led by Health Care and Social Assistance (Jobs and Skills Australia, 2025 Employment Projections, December 2025).

Do these projections account for AI? No. JSA states plainly that these projections do not currently reflect the labour market implications of generative AI or other emerging technologies, because they are built from existing industry and demographic trends rather than future shifts. For the AI-specific picture, JSA runs a separate study, Our Gen AI Transition, released in stages between August and September 2025, which we cover in our guide to jobs most exposed to AI.

Which industry is growing the fastest in Australia? Health Care and Social Assistance, already the largest industry in the country and employing close to one in six working Australians, has the strongest projected growth of any industry, around 23% over the decade to May 2035. That growth is driven mainly by the ageing population and rising demand for health services and residential aged care (Jobs and Skills Australia, Employment Projections - Industry outlook, accessed July 2026).

Can I move into a growing job without a university degree? Yes. Several of the fastest-growing occupations, including Dental Assistants and Nursing Support and Personal Care Workers, are usually entered with a Certificate III, not a university degree, and customer-facing experience from a call centre or admin role often transfers well. Management-level growth roles typically need a bachelor's degree or several years of relevant frontline and coordination experience instead.

Growth is the destination, not the plan

Knowing where the jobs are going is only half the picture. The other half is whether you can actually get there from where you sit today, and how long that move realistically takes. Our career change pathways break the reachable destinations down by starting point, including moving into health admin and a move into NDIS coordination, and our at-risk jobs in Australia guide covers the roles under the most pressure right now if you're not sure whether your current job is one of them.

Get a free Career Change Check to see roles people from your kind of work moved into.

Full data tables and methodology notes for every figure in this piece are listed on our sources page.

Changing Careers provides general information, not licensed career or financial advice.

Sources

Jobs and Skills Australia, "2025 Employment Projections - Summary report", December 2025, https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-12/employment_projection_-_summary.pdf
Jobs and Skills Australia, "Employment Projections - Outlook by occupation", accessed July 2026, https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/data/employment-projections/occupation
Jobs and Skills Australia, "Em